In the world of travel photography – or actually any photography, for that matter – the weight of your gear can make or break your experience. When I first started in freelance photojournalism, I often found myself burdened with a heavy camera bag crammed with multiple lenses, accessories, and other gadgets I thought were essential. I also foolishly believed I needed the biggest kit to look the part. Each assignment became a balancing act between capturing the perfect shot and enduring the strain of lugging all that equipment around.

I first came across the Leica Q system while searching for a smaller piece of kit to replace my relatively chunky Nikon D800E gear set. Initially, I had switched from Nikon to Sony’s mirrorless system but soon found myself missing an optical viewfinder, which led me to explore Leica’s M ecosystem. Instead, I walked out of the Leica Store in Mayfair with a Leica Q2 instead. The Q2 is a great camera, but I personally found it lacking in high ISO performance and the autofocus system. The Q2 and I parted ways just over six months after I bought it, but it was an amicable separation, as I was still eager to see what a potential Q3 might offer.

Come May 2023, thanks to the team at Leica, I was fortunate to have my name on a Leica Q3 since its release. Over the past year or so, I have taken it from the dripping wet interiors of Iceland’s glaciers to the bustling streets of Japan’s neon-lit metropolises, and everywhere in between. What I discovered was a camera so versatile and reliable that it made me feel like this could be the only camera I need for my travels.

The Lens – the summilux 28 mm f/1.7

Ensuring that photons hit the 60-megapixel sensor of the Q3 correctly is the exceptional Summilux 28 mm f/1.7 lens. This lens has remained the same since the days of the first generation Leica Q, which was released in 2015 – why fix something that is not broken. The Summilux produces beautiful images with stunning sharpness. At times, especially when shooting portraits, I have found the lens to be even too sharp! The lens’ wide aperture makes the camera great for low-light situations, as well as creating buttery smooth out of focus areas.

Although I rarely use the Q3 for macro photography, its lens can be switched into macro mode where minimum focusing distance changes from around 30 cm to 17 cm.

For those of you interested in why the name Summilux, it is a combination of the Latin words Summum and Lux (meaning ‘highest’ and ‘light’ respectively). Summilux is Leica’s nomenclature for lenses that are faster than f/2 but slower than f/1. Most Leica Summilux lenses are f/1.4 lenses, half a stop faster than the Q’s Summilux at f/1.7.

Small Footprint

The Q3 weighs in at around 743 g with the battery inserted. The Q3, as an all-in-one package, is smaller and lighter than a Fujifilm X-T5 mounted with an 18 mm f/1.4, or a Sony A7R V mounted with a 24 mm f/1.4 GM. The small footprint of the Q3 means that I often do not use an actual camera bag, but simply wrapping it in a colourful Domke padded wrap and then throwing – maybe more carefully placing – it into my normal everyday-use bag.

Use case 1: Iceland in autumn

Iceland’s weather can be pretty harsh and unforgiving. During a one-week visit in October, temperature ranged from double digits to dipping just below 0°C. Winds ranged from calm to winds at force 8 on the Beaufort scale. Some days saw us basking in glorious sunlight, although most of the time we found ourselves under overcast grey skies or drenched to the bone by rain, glacial meltwater, or spray from one of Iceland’s many waterfalls. The Q3, with its weather sealing and IP52 rating, performed very well in these Icelandic conditions.

In the low-light interior of a glacial cave, the Q3 allowed me to capture the mesmerising sapphire blue caused by the white light outside refracting through the ice. The deeper shade of blue, the thicker the ice through which light has to travel. The dripping glacial meltwater and the spray from the surface water entering a moulin made for quite challenging conditions to photograph due to the constant splashing of water onto the front element – the fact that the camera is rated at IP52 meant that I was not actually too worried about the camera itself getting wet.

With the image stabilisation system of the Q3, I was able to get the shot above of a waterfall inside a glacial cave without a tripod. However, I have read some people’s experience of the Q3’s image stabilisation to be less than ideal. The dynamic range on the full-frame 60-megapixel sensor is stated by some reviews to be around 14 to 15 stops, although Leica does not seem to officially state the dynamic range of the Q3 on its website, allows for capturing a wide range of shadows and highlights as can be seen from the photographs from the glacial cave above. It also means that I can push my exposure far to the right of the histogram when doing a spot of astrophotography in light polluted areas and still get enough detail when pulling back the highlights in post to reveal the northern lights when shot within Reykjavik.

I found the 60-megapixel sensor to be a godsend in that, whilst it can be very unforgiving of poor camera holding technique or missed focus, it can also give you a lot of latitude if you are not needing to have your final image at the full 9520 × 6336 resolution. When I offer prints, I would usually go as big as A3 – A2 at a push. This was something that started when I did a lot of covering of protests as a photojournalist, preferring to use wide angle lenses so as to force me to take photographs from as close to the action as possible. With larger prints, you would tend to look at them from further away, but with my desire to put the viewer into the action of the protest, I also wanted that feeling of being in the thick of it to be conveyed when looking at the print. At 3 × 2 aspect ratio, I would usually create 15 × 10 prints, which fit comfortably within A3 size, with some space for a border. This means at 300 dpi, all I needed was 4500 × 3000. Downsizing from the full resolution of the Q3 image of 9520 × 6336 to 4500 × 3000 means a lot of the softness from slight camera shakes or missed focus do not become so apparent. Also true of any noise that might appear from using high ISO.

The high resolution of the Q3’s sensor also allows for a lot of cropping / digital zooming. The Q3 has a built in digital zoom function which is preset to the approximate field of view of 35 mm, 50 mm, 75 mm, and 90 mm lenses. This means you can get close up and personal without invading the personal space of various wild animals – I was not that close to this humpback whale, but still managed to get quite a detailed cropped image. Granted it still does not beat using a telephoto lens, say a 100-400 mm, but for me, the Q3’s portability still makes a very compelling case to leave the 100-400 mm at home, unless I know I’m on a trip to mainly photograph wildlife.

Use Case 2: Norway in winter

Both the Q2’s and Q3’s technical specification state that the cameras’ operating range is from 0°C to 40°C. Having put the Q2 through the Finnish Lapland winter with temperatures as cold as -22°C, I was pretty sure the Q3 would function fine in the Norwegian Arctic winter too. Temperatures did not get as low as -22°C during the Norwegian visit, bottoming at around -10°C. The Q3 was functioning quite comfortably even when left out in those kinds of temperature for a few hours whilst waiting for the aurora to show up over the city of Tromsø.

I pushed the Q3’s ISO to 6400 whilst in Norway in order to try and capture as much detail as I could in the Milky Way whilst avoiding star trails. Whilst with the Q2 I would probably try and limit my ISO to 1600, the Q3’s files cleaned up very well at ISO 6400. And, as mentioned above, the effects of noise can also be negated somewhat when you scale down your image if you do not need it at full resolution. Happily though, even a full resolution ISO 6400 shot with the Q3 seems perfectly usable.

The 60-megapixel sensor with its high dynamic range, coupled with the razor sharp Summilux 28 mm f/1.7 lens, produce beautiful postcard views, allowing for the pulling back of highlights and pushing of shadows in post in photographs of snow covered landscapes in daytime.

Use case 3: Japan in spring

A geomagnetic superstorm was brewing in the cosmos above Earth on 10 May 2024. People in the UK, even in London, were eagerly awaiting nightfall to see if they could catch a glimpse of the aurora. Some amazing photographs of the aurora were posted on social media from across the UK. The aurora was even photographed from Heathrow Airport!

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Sadly, I had left the UK that very morning to fly eastwards to Japan. At around 19.00 UK time, I was flying somewhere over northern China and Beijing. My WhatsApp notifications were abuzz with excited messages from my friends about seeing the aurora that night, with some commenting how I was sadly in the wrong part of the world. Out of curiosity – or perhaps spite – I pointed my camera out of the plane’s window to see what was over the northern horizon. Being a rather bumpy part of the flight, I had to shoot with a faster shutter speed than what I would usually use to photograph the aurora. But this also meant cranking up the ISO to 50000 – yes, you read that right, that’s ISO fifty thousand – to be able to shoot at a shutter speed of half a second. As a photojournalist, I quickly learned that it was not necessarily about getting that technically perfect shot, but the short that tells the story, and whilst not quite print-worthy quality, it is more than good enough as a keepsake, or scaled down and compressed for social media.

When I picked up my first Leica Q series camera, the Leica Q2, I found the Summilux 28 mm f/1.7 a bit of an odd focal length to use because I had mainly been shooting with either 24 mm or 35 mm. 24 mm is the equivalent field of view of many mobile phone cameras, and also one of my favourite lenses for the Sony E mount – the Sony 24 mm f/1.4 GM – and 35 mm because it is a great focal length to use with the Leica M system, as well as the widest focal length on one of my favourite zoom lenses on the Sony E mount, the Tamron 35-150mm f/2-2.8. 28 mm just felt a little odd in between 24 mm and 35 mm. But I soon got used to it, and it was nice to have something which was not as wide and distorting as 24 mm, but also allowing me to shoot in tighter inner-city spots than I could with a 35 mm.

The Summilux 28 mm f/1.7 is also such a sharp lens that I am quite happy to shoot landscapes with it even wide open. This becomes very helpful because it allows me to have as wide an aperture as possible when shooting landscapes out of a window, putting any dirt on the window out of focus and less noticeable. If you want to use the mechanical shutter, the fastest shutter speed is 1/2000. Shutter speed can be as fast as 1/4000 if using the electronic shutter, but then rolling shutter becomes an issue, which is very pronounced when travelling on the Shinkansen at around 200 mph.

My ultimate travelling companion

Well, not quite my ‘ultimate travelling companion’ – that would be my girlfriend – but definitely the Leica Q3 is the camera most likely to be part of my travel kit – that is unless I’m after a very specific look, in which case I may likely bring the Light Lens Lab 50 mm f/2 Speed Panchro II (this lens makes everything shot wide open look like a still from a 1940s movie! *swoon*) mounted to my M-P (Typ 240) or M Monochrom (Typ 246).

In my personal opinion, I think that the Leica Q3 could be a great camera for anyone looking to simplify their photography without compromising on quality. It is ideal for travel photographers, street photographers, or anyone who values a lightweight, all-in-one camera that delivers outstanding performance. While it is an investment – retailing at the time of writing at £5,550 – the price is not as eye-watering as it may first seem. If you were to buy the Sony A7R V, another 60-megapixel body – with the Sony 24 mm f/1.4 GM, this would set you back £3,689 for the body and £1,259 for the lens, totally £4,948. The Q3, however, has an advantage over the Sony combination of being lighter and smaller. For me, the Q3, despite its price tag, is a unique blend of portability, versatility, and image quality that can be hard to beat.

Of course, this is not to say that there are not other great cameras and lens combination for travel. For example, the Fujifilm X100VI retails for £1,599 (if you can get your hands on one) and is a very capable camera for travel. It is even smaller than the Q3 and weighs only 521 g compared to the Q3 at 743 g. The fixed lens of the X100VI is a 23 mm f/2, which gives an equivalent field of view of around 35 mm in full-frame terms.

Although slightly larger and heavier than the Q3, the combination of a 60-megapixel Sony A7R IV or A7R V with a Sony 24 mm f/1.4 GM lens weighing in at a total of 1,110 g can also be a compelling option. The price of the camera body drops from £3,689 to £2,899 if you choose the Sony A7R IV over the A7R V, bringing the total cost of the body and lens down to £4,158. Pricing can be further reduced if you look at second-hand used offerings.

After over a year of travelling with the Leica Q3, I can confidently say that, generally, I would not find myself regretting a decision to only bring the Q3 with me on my future travels. If you are considering a change or looking for a camera that combines quality with simplicity, and comes in a small lightweight package, definitely consider giving the Leica Q3 a try. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or an enthusiastic traveller, the Leica Q3’s blend of simplicity, portability, and quality might just make it your next essential travel companion.